BlackTrax Has Vital Role in Trinity Fellowship Church's Presentation of Who Is This Jesus?

	Photo: Trinity Fellowship Church

Over a year ago, Trinity Fellowship Church (TFC) based in Amarillo, TX first installed the BlackTrax realtime motion tracking solution from CAST BlackTrax Ltd. As part of the festive season, TFC presented an illustrated three-week sermon series called Who Is This Jesus?.

BlackTrax is part of TFC's lighting, sound, and video system for its 3,800-seat auditorium set up as a theatre in the round.

BlackTrax realtime motion tracking solution was installed in August 2013 and has consistently been used a number of times each week ever since.

"It definitely solved a lot of problems for me over the year we've been using it. As soon as BlackTrax was installed and I was able to control the iris and beam to a specific width no matter where the light tracked. The options of what we could accomplish suddenly became seemingly endless in terms of creating and maintaining the environments I had always envisioned," said Kevin Penrod, lighting designer at TFC.

"The biggest challenge BlackTrax has helped me overcome is the sheer reliability that it is going to work with an incredible amount of smoothness during our services--to the extent that it can practically go unnoticed if I want it to!

"Thanks to the 'BTBeacon's' signal transmission, I can pick up my talent when they are off the stage before they step on the stage which is a huge confidence builder! The ability to track off the stage gives me more options creatively. On the average weekend it lets me light the talent sooner which gives my camera team time to make adjustments before the talent shot needs to be taken, and a much cleaner transition."

"BlackTrax has given us such a high success rate that I can't imagine going back to using another system or trying to light an in the round space without it and still achieve the right lighting. Now there is always the choice of follow spot operators, but they come with a high insurance risk, take a lot of work to find when you need them as volunteers especially, and even the best follow spot op misses his mark from time to time," said Pernod.

On the main stage, in the midst of services, worshippers were taken on a journey, travelling back to the time of Jesus. The sermon series was performed in the auditorium and recorded live with 10 HD cameras.

For Who Is This Jesus?, TFC actively tracked multiple worship leaders, two speaking pastors, and seven characters on stage each weekend over the three weeks.

BlackTrax tracked the talent and delivered the precise target data from the lighting control board to 82 automated lights including: 24 Coemar I-spots; 12 Martin Mac 101's; 12 High X-spot Xtremes; 26 Martin Mac 2000 Profiles; and, 8 Martin Mac 2000 Washes (Very Narrow Lenses).

"BlackTrax is the only tool that allows me to create an environment on my stage while still being able to light my talent appropriately," said Penrod.

Lighting is critical for TFC messaging to its worshippers, not only live in front of audiences but also broadcast over the Internet. BlackTrax worked to enhance lighting through automation and presentation building an aura around them, and which increases intimacy with the congregation either in the immediate audience or remotely.

"Without BlackTrax we had to limit the movement of our talent in special productions such as this, or if we didn't go that route the entire stage would be washed out in white and would destroy the overall effect I needed to achieve; this is just one of the many challenges we always faced by building in the round and were overcome by using BlackTrax. No other system performs so well," said Penrod.